I. Introduction
A largely unknown national treasure rests within a two-hour drive from Salt Lake City. Tucked into the sparsely populated western expanse of Box Elder County, Utah, the ghosts of the United States' first transcontinental railroad still haunt 87 miles of abandoned original railroad grade on lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM}, National Park Service (NPS) and, to a lesser extent, private land. Where once the heavy rhythmic chugging of steam engines and a regular scream of train whistles pierced the silence of such an open landscape, where not even a tree stands today, only the rumble of a solitary car or passing airplane disturbs the deafening quiet. Trestles, once bridges for tons of freight and hundreds of passengers each week, are now home to squawking ravens or a small and fleeting bit of shade for resting cattle. In the 1870s, a stroll through one of the railroad towns that dotted this part of Utah would have treated your ears to a mixture of languages, English, Cantonese, and Gaelic. By the 1880s and 1890s these languages grew to include Spanish, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Bulgarian, and other Slavic tongues. But today, the visitor is confronted with overwhelming silence broken only by the ocean-like sound of wind and the occasional song of the meadowlark. From nearly anyone's perspective, a trip down the BLM's Transcontinental Backcountry Byway is a step back in time; a time capsule capturing the American West in the formative
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years following the Civil War when expansion from coast to coast of North America picked up literal and figurative, steam. While no trains pass on the gravel and dirt railroad bed, where there are more sheep than people, this landscape and its embedded history can transport the visitor to 1868-1869 when there were few EuropeanAmericans in this region, Native American tribes were being pushed further and further towards dispossession of lands and ways of life, and nature reigned supreme. Today, there are few reminders of modern life as you drive along the railroad grade built by immigrant workers over 150 years ago. One can drive nearly 30 miles without sight of a single cell phone tower, telephone pole or building. It is this magical piece of American, and world, history that the Salt Lake Field Office of the BLM manages most for public use and enjoyment today. After the Southern Pacific Railroad constructed the Lucin (or Great Salt Lake) Cutoff in 1904, the original transcontinental railroad line around the north side of the Great Salt Lake dropped to a lesser used route (often referred to as the "Old Line") until it was finally abandoned in 1942. Between the 1940s and the 1980s, the original railroad land grants from the 1860s slowly, and in pieces, were acquired either by private interests through sales or returned to federal management as originally agreed to by the railroads. Today the grade is managed by the BLM. Between 1987 and 1994, the Transcontinental Railroad in Box Elder County was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and from the nomination form it was listed because: "[t]his abandoned portion of the original railroad grade is physical evidence of the country's enthusiastic undertaking to connect the east with the west, an undertaking that resulted in the strengthening of the country's political and economic ties."
